Despite what some may think, Nintendo doesn't just make a product, put it on the market and hope everything works. The company has a reputation for making stuff that doesn't break easily, and these images show how that reputation is maintained.

They give a rare glimpse behind the curtain at Nintendo, showing the various stress tests a piece of hardware is subjected to in order to ensure it's sturdy enough to sell to the public.

The seven stages of mechanical hell do things like open and close a handheld's hinges, rub a robot finger over the surface, spin the cables, vibrate the packaging and press all the buttons.

There are a few more tests not pictured, like sticking a handheld somewhere really hot, or really cold, or really humid.

It looks like torture. Lucky, then, that only a doomed few units are condemned to such a fate, selected to represent the bulk of a manufacturing run. If every unit had to go through this they'd fall apart the second you took it out of the box.